The Supreme Court on Sept. 26 temporarily stayed a federal appeals court ruling requiring that Alabama death row inmate Michael Sockwell be retried for murder.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit had ruled on June 30 that Sockwell’s conviction was unconstitutional because prosecutors engaged in racial discrimination during jury selection.

Justice Clarence Thomas, who oversees emergency appeals from Alabama, issued an administrative stay of the 11th Circuit ruling. An administrative stay gives the justices more time to consider an emergency appeal.

A divided three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit had ruled that Alabama prosecutors violated Sockwell’s constitutional rights by excluding blacks from the jury at his trial.

The ruling made Sockwell eligible for retrial. He was convicted in the 1988 killing of Montgomery County Deputy Sheriff Isaiah Harris. Although Sockwell was sentenced to death, his lawyers said their client’s IQ is low enough to make him ineligible for the death penalty.

The panel majority specifically found that prosecutors violated Sockwell’s 14th Amendment rights when they “repeatedly and purposefully” turned away potential black jurors who were deemed more sympathetic to him because of their shared race.

Prosecutors said the sheriff’s wife hired Sockwell to kill Harris to conceal an affair she was involved in and to collect her husband’s insurance money. No witnesses saw the shooting. Sockwell initially told authorities that police withheld food and water and threatened to beat and kill him before he confessed to the crime.

In the state’s emergency application to the Supreme Court filed on Sept. 25, Alabama Solicitor General Edmund G. LaCour Jr. said Sockwell is challenging his murder conviction by claiming that prosecutors violated Batson v. Kentucky (1986). President Donald Trump nominated LaCour in August to be a judge for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.

In Batson, the Supreme Court held that a prosecutor may not use a peremptory challenge to exclude jurors because of their race. A peremptory challenge allows an attorney to reject a certain number of jurors without providing a reason.

Until the 11th Circuit ruled, every court that reviewed Sockwell’s claim had rejected it, LaCour said.

LaCour told the Supreme Court that it should stay the circuit court ruling because the state has a good chance of reversing the ruling.

If the circuit court ruling is allowed to take effect on Sept. 30 and a state court vacates the conviction, Alabama’s right to seek review may be “irreparably” harmed, as the state will be compelled to retry Sockwell for murder.

Thomas directed Sockwell’s attorneys to file a response to the application by 4 p.m. on Oct. 3.

Sockwell’s attorneys at Shook, Hardy, and Bacon did not respond to a request for comment.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

This article by Matthew Vadum appeared Sept. 27, 2025, in The Epoch Times. It was updated Sept. 28, 2025.